Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t The Register The international ITER Fusion project might be mired in cost overruns and severe delays, but competition is heating up, between China and Germany, to create a viable nuclear fusion reactor.
Back in December, WUWT reported that Germany had started testing their Stellarator Fusion Reactor with Helium Plasmas.
Since that time, China has responded with a 100 second sustained fusion burn – a feat they hope in the near future to extend to 1000 seconds (16 minutes).
A team of Chinese scientists in Hefei, capital city of east China’s Anhui Province, has made an unprecedented breakthrough on an energy generation device that will make it one step closer to transform energy into stable, sustainable and controllable resources.
The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion device, nicknamed “artificial sun”, made a 102-second long pulse plasma discharge at over the central electron temperature of 50 million degrees in Hefei at the end of January, 2016. This is the longest plasma discharge time recorded in all the Tokamak fusion devices in the world.
Led by the Chinese scientists at the Institute of Plasma Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Heifei, the EAST fusion device has made it one step closer to the goal of 1000-second long pulse plasma discharge at over the central electron temperature of 100 million degrees.
Read more: http://english.cas.cn/newsroom/news/201602/t20160205_159588.shtml
Its not just China and Germany. India, which is supplying many of the components used in the ITER project, announced their own fusion project in 2015.
The US government has also shown interest in Fusion, though the current administration seems to be mainly focussed on renewables. Which is rather a shame, because nuclear fusion is one of the few fields of research where scale really matters.
The biggest problem with sustaining a nuclear fusion reaction is keeping the plasma hot. If you heat something to 100 million degrees, it really wants to transfer its heat to anything cold in its immediate vicinity. One possible solution to this heat problem is to scale existing designs up, to create a really large plasma. Simple geometry dictates that a larger plasma has a more favourable surface area to volume ratio. Since heat is created by the plasma volume, but lost through the plasma surface, improving the surface area to volume ratio helps to keep the plasma hot – maybe enough to create a viable, self sustaining fusion burn.
Since American fusion researchers don’t have access to the same level of funding as German, Chinese or UN ITER researchers, they’re focusing on innovation. Firms like Lockheed Martin are attempting to use clever engineering, to make up for the lack of scale.
The innovative approach being pursued by America may or may not yield results. Fusion is full of pioneers who believe they had almost solved the problem. Robert Bussard, one of America’s nuclear fusion pioneers, at the time of his death was attempting to raise funding for a large scale Polywell Fusion Reactor. Sadly Bussard died, before he could achieve his life’s ambition, and conduct a full scale test of his ideas.
The concern for America is, or should be, that the brute force approach, building big, will almost certainly lead to viable nuclear fusion. If the ridiculous sums of money America spends on renewables, were diverted to fusion research, America would leap ahead of the competition. Current generation reactors are tantalisingly close to success.
Germany, China and India are taking an interest in Fusion, because they know that whoever cracks the fusion problem, will own the world.
The lack of US government interest in nuclear fusion may be due to pressure from green groups. For example, Greenpeace is strongly critical of nuclear fusion research; they think the money should be spent on renewables.
Regardless of the reason, relying just on innovation, as the USA seems to be doing, in my opinion is a huge gamble. If it pays off, it will pay off big. But if the problems encountered by the innovators prove to be intractable, as they likely will, the countries which went large will win the prize. By ignoring fusion, or at least not treating it as seriously as other countries, America is at risk of losing her competitive advantage, for decades to come.
Scrap this line of work. It would take no tome with such resources to perfect Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR) which could power everything in the world, create a decentralized power system—no power grid needed—and take people out of the equation as LFTR can be totally automated.
Except for the minor problem that there is no such thing as a thorium reactor.
Actually, the U.S. operated a Thorium reactor to test feasibility for use in aircraft way back when they toyed with keeping a large aircraft aloft with nuclear weapons around the clock The test reactor was not designed to be installed in an aircraft, but to test feasibility. One account I read said that the development was cancelled because the military was interested in a fast breeder reactor that could produce plutonium for bombs.
Oak Ridge National Lab had an experimental LFTR for a few years. Now China and India have taken up the mantle. This is a decent report, warning that LFTR is no panacea, but may still be the way to go in the fission space. http://www.npr.org/2012/05/04/152026805/is-thorium-a-magic-bullet-for-our-energy-problems
Ah, no. Instead of posting knee-jerk one-liners, you should think a bit beforehand. Try typing google LFTR. LFTR technology is very real.
Utter nonsense. There was no thorium in the Thorium Reactor (sic) at Oak Ridge. Where do you guys get this stuff?
Wrong. Existing CANDU reactors can use thorium fuel without any modifications.
Agreed. Nice to see you mention LFTR. It’s a much more attainable means of generating power than fusion. I have never understood why it hasn’t received more attention.
Because it contained no thorium. It’s made up.
“China has responded with a 100 second sustained fusion burn”
Where is United States of America, the once Superpower of Technologies?
We are chopping up and frying birds with blades and mirrors. Thanks to Obama, Democrats, and Greenies, wasting approximate $140 Billion on Global Warming Scam.
‘Germany, China and India are taking an interest in Fusion, because they know that whoever cracks the fusion problem, will own the world.’
How? Unless they can make electricity for under 5 cents per kWh, they’ve just got a novelty.
“Greenpeace is strongly critical of nuclear fusion research; they think the money should be spent on renewables”
Of course Eco Terrorists are against; they don’t want viable solutions or compromises. Its their way or no way.
All the comments on Fusion being 50 years away forever, are obsolescent poppycock.
People that thirst for Thorium reactors do not recognize that if started today a Fusion power plant will be licensed and produce power to the grid long before a Thorium reactor can be licensed, .
Any Fission reactor must contain large quantities of radioactive materials that must be carefully kept from the biosphere. Hence a careful and review of design and operations is conducted by the NRC. Please understand that the licensing of the Westinghouse A 1000 is simply an improvement on the PWR reactors from Westinghouse that are built and running today.
Yet it took 30 years to license it for use! A nonexistent Thorium rector, except for conceptual designs, would take as long or longer to license..
A Fusion reactor has no such restraint, It contains no large quantity or radioactive materials. Yes, some of the materials with which it is constructed can become radioactive, just like a Fission Plant/ But do not include any trans-uranic actinides that endure for thousands of years. like any Fission plant does thorrium, or uranium based or otherwise.
Fifty years of research has one by one solved almost all the maddening plasma instabilities. We know we have reached the end of the search, as long stable containment measured in seconds reveal no more instabilities to be encountered.
Iter is now more an engineering prototype than a scientific experiment. What it was meant to discover has been partially achieved piecemeal, here and there and elsewhere; But only Iter beings it all together. With Iter designs harkening back to the ’90s, if begun fresh today, would be half or a third the size, simply due to improved magnets.
Indeed the successor to Iter is talked of being designed, beginning next year and is fully planned to to provide power to the grid. It may take a decade or more to build, (so does any other substantial power plant) but that is far different than wondering if Fusion can be made to work at all.
Fusion is almost here, and too many don’t recognize that fact… YET.
If the actinides “endure for thousands of years,” they are by definition no worse than the source uranium in the first place. Very low activity and very low threat. Might as well throw them into the sea, considering the vast quantities of radioactive elements already in seawater.
If fresh designs begun today would be a third of the size, why the hell are they building ITER, instead of the newer one third size design.
As far as I know, all that they have ” built ” of ITER is to pour a whole bunch of concrete.
We’ve been pouring concrete for hundreds; maybe thousands of years.
If I were funding ITER, in any fashion, I would build the damn machine first, and get it running. Then if it starts to look like it is going to need a big concrete containment vessel, it would be time to pour concrete.
It’s a totally bass ackwards project.
G
Pouring concrete before you have proved the science works, is just insanity.
NOBODY has got the science to work yet.
Problem with fusion, speaking as a nuclear engineering grad, is that the current tritium-deutirium reactions produce neutron that are way too fast (hard to convert into heat) and you have to manufacture and handle the dangerous tritium. Helium3+Helium³ reactions are safer but at a much higher temperature, and you have to go to the moon for the He3!
Sanity, engineering and $ dictate developing the molten salt liquid core thorium fission reactors. Higher efficiency, inherently safer (gets too hot – melts plug, and core drains into cooling tank), can use old spent uranium fuel or all the thorium produced as toxic waste from the production of rare earth metals that go into high efficiency electric motors, generators, etc. Thorium won’t have to be mined.
And a working prototype was made back in the 60’s!!!
I believe that DT fusion produces a fast neutron, and is the lowest ignition threshold process. DD fusion is not supposed to produce neutrons, but is a much higher ignition threshold.
But that puzzles me. When I was back at U of A we used a 600 KV Cockroft Walton accelerator to fire deuterons, at a heavy ice target, frozen onto a rotating copper heat sink.
That resulted somehow, in making 14 MeV neutrons, which were used in polarization studies, and I think 14 MeV protons were made as well.
I built a Stilbene crystal scintillation detector for the neutrons. Other students were using proportional gas counters that were very inefficient neutron detectors, so the accelerator had to run (reliably) for days to get any kind of statistics at all. But those proportional counters (Geiger counters sub avalanche threshold) were completely insensitive to beta or gamma rays.
My Stilbene crystal was very efficient for neutrons; maybe 10^4 or 10^5 higher than the gas counters, but was also an efficient beta and gamma ray detector.
My project was to electronically discriminate between alpha, beta, gamma, and neutron radiation. I could count any of them, and reject all of the others, so I could just turn a knob and select the radiation species at will. So the accelerator runs could be very short, and that contraption was hard to maintain. (I was one of the maintenance technicians also).
We used to use a Polonium Beryllium neutron source to calibrate the detectors, but it produced about 10^4 gammas per neutron. We couldn’t get approval to have a plutonium beryllium neutron source, so ours died about every 200 days or so. The gas counter chaps, didn’t know about all the gammas, so they sometimes put the neutron source in their pockets, to carry it from place to place. Once my stilbene crystal showed them the veritable avalanche of gammas, they stopped carrying that little lead pot in their pockets.
So I don’t quite understand, where we got the 14 MeV neutrons from in that D-D collision, but we did.
G
It seems many people don’t have a good idea of what is going on at ITER. The reason it progresses so slowly is because all nations involved want to be able to build all parts themselves, and hence contribute pieces for ‘everything’, because once ITER should work, they wanna be able to replicate the technology at home. So as ITER progresses, it should not be a surprise to anyone that participating nations OF COURSE are doing their own thing in parallel back home… btw, since you last reported on Germany, they have progressed to hydrogen plasma as well.
The reason there are 35 countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER contributing to ITER , the US a founding member, is that the countries want to be in on the monopoly once fusion becomes commercial. IMO the great number of countries contributes to the bureaucracy that creates lengthening of the program dates. Too many cooks spoil the broth :(.
At least with regards to the German “Wendelstein-7” this is definitely *not* a “competition”:
http://www.ipp.mpg.de/960186/zoom.jpg
http://www.ipp.mpg.de/15144/zuendbedingungen
I know nothing about the Chinese, Indian or Japanese efforts (quite franktly that would the task of the media who report this nonsense), but I seriously doubt that these rival ITER. While ITER is *not* a power plant, it is my impression it will be the closest thing to a *tokamak* power plant for at least a decade that we will have on this planet.
It is my impression that all these tokamak machines build in “competition” to ITER will surely produce lots of PHDs and maybe some interesting (or even helpful) science, but a rival to ITER they are not. (After all, ITER is so freaking complex and expensive, it is highly doubtful that a single nation – not even a larger one – would build a rival tokamak at this stage of research).
Sorry to burst this “ITER competition bubble”:
“China is a member of the ITER consortium, and EAST will be a testbed for technologies proposed for the ITER project”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EAST#Physics_objectives
…By ignoring fusion, or at least not treating it as seriously as other countries, America is at risk of losing her competitive advantage, for decades to come….
Speaking from an ‘other countries’ perspective, The USA lost its competitive advantage years ago – probably in the 1950s or 1960s. Since then it has had a ‘monopoly advantage’ – its size and the dollar position as a reserve currency have made it ‘too big to be allowed to fail’. I shouldn’t worry about the fact that other countries are developing new technologies – the US has always imported its innovation and then concealed this from the local population with its ‘not invented here’ attitude. I don’t suppose this will be any different….
Storm the stockades of secrecy and retrieve the research and experiments of Tesla and the worlds problems of electricity generation without pollution are solved. A few others have come after him and also been silenced. Sad.
I’m trying to get this into a modern-world context. We generate electricity (AC) by the method first devised by Faraday around nearly 200 years ago, of moving a coil of wires through a magnetic field. We then created steam turbines to do this on a grand scale. Yet here we are in a fusion age still looking at creating AC from the same process: creating steam from heat to drive generators. Have we not moved on in science since Faraday? Is electromagnetism still the only way to get reliable power? (I don’t count PV DC arrays)
The most efficient way to transmit power over long distances is 3-phase AC. I am confident Faraday didn’t know this in his day. It’s why AC won the AC/DC transmission battle!
Well, no. Most efficient method of long distance transmission is DC. This is precisely why all the most modern long distance transmission systems in Canada (Manitoba and Quebec) use HVDC. A similar DC system, including several submarine links, is intended for the new Labrador hydraulic development of the lower Churchill River to connect through the island of Newfoundland to Nova Scotia.
With DC, line losses are greatly reduced. The disadvantage of DC is that it cannot be transformed. Thus AC-DC converters are required at line transformer stations.
An analog of AC is a piston motor which has zero force twice in each turn. AC is an inefficient use of the resistance of the medium.
DC can tension can be raised or lowered, just not with two simple fixed electromagnets.
But the thing is (bearing in mind I’m an old electronics man with AC theory), I can appreciate the advantage of 3 Phase, but I’m surprised that in two hundred years we are no further fwd than what Faraday defined as a way of generating it. Fusion is yet another big boiler and I can’t believe that Faraday invented the last ever (and only) means of AC power generation, bearing in mind it had never been done before.
Re cgi and simple…..
AC is used for most electrical distribution because transformers won’t work on DC. High voltages are used on long-haul transmission lines to minimize power loss (which is proportional to current squared) while lower voltages are used at the end use points for safety. Also, for all but the smallest electrical motors, AC motors are simpler (no commutation required) and more efficient.
DC is used for very long-haul transmission lines for efficiency reasons (usually with superconducting lines these days), even though they require very elaborate step-up and step-down stations. These are too expensive to use for most purposes, however.
“Also, for all but the smallest electrical motors, AC motors are simpler (no commutation required) and more efficient.”
So you are saying AC motors have only advantages for every purposes (except toys motors)?
Then why did the first series of TGV (train grande vitesse) used a DC motor?
“simple-touriste
February 7, 2016 at 5:47 am”
Well, my electrical tutors, study and qualifications must have all been wrong for “Y” and “Delta” configured systems (UK 415v/ac 63amp). Now, I did say transmission. Your alternator in your car is 110v/ac, 3 phase “Y”, rectified to 12v/dc. No more dynos! In the UK the ground level 3rd rail supply in the rail network is typically 600, 750, 1200 etc v/dc, which requires substations at regular intervals. The UK overhead pantograph system is 15k or 25k v/ac (There is some DC) with locomotives using 3 phase AC induction motors. DC has it’s place (And in fact one industry I worked in replaced AC cooling fans with DC in their machines), but AC is king for long distance transmission. That’s why it is in use all over the world.
AC transmission lines are radio antennas, with a wavelength of 5,000 or 6,000 km. So even with twisting, the long haul lines radiate energy. HVDC transmission lines can be in the megavolt range I believe. Dunno how they convert it to usable voltages.
g
Basically, the conversion stations have really, really big inverters that use solid-state devices to generate AC from DC (or vice-versa).
http://www.energy.siemens.com/us/pool/hq/power-transmission/HVDC/HVDC_Proven_Technology.pdf (really, really, really big.
https://library.e.abb.com/public/aa1434194d4437b5c1256ddd00347089/10-17m186.pdf
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/germany-takes-the-lead-in-hvdc
Yes transmission lines are antennae, thus the problems with EMP and solar flares. However you don’t have to worry too much about transmitting energy: at 60 Hz a half-wave antenna (what you need to be efficient) needs to be 2500 km long.
The Dense Plasma Focus design directly generates electricity from the reactor by-passing turbines. See lppfusion.com
I can’t see it there. Please link to a direct generation page.
As above
http://lppfusion.com/fusion-power/dpf-device/
Thanks Phil for adding that link that George requested. Electric energy is directly generated by the FF-1 device. The process starts with high energy ion beams that the reactor creates in attaining fusion.
“The ion beam of charged particles is directed into a decelerator which acts like a particle accelerator in reverse. Instead of using electricity to accelerate charged particles, they decelerate charged particles and generate electricity. Some of this electricity is recycled to power the next fusion pulse while the excess (net) energy is the electricity produced by the fusion power plant. Some of the X-ray energy produced by the plasmoid can also be directly converted to electricity through the photoelectric effect (like solar panels).”
AC motors generate a rotating magnetic field, with special advantages for three phase (in large enough sizes). The torque generated is a consequence of the slip frequency, between the field rotation rate, and the mechanical RPM. So synchronous motors have some special problems, because there is no slip.
DC motors, particularly series motors, generate their maximum torque when the rotor is stalled, which is why they are good for transportation systems. They love to start up from zero RPM. AC motors are finicky to start from zero under full load.
And my car’s alternator doesn’t generate any 110 V AC.
g
I think I did say the wavelength was 5000 or 6000 km. !/2 wave dipoles are very efficient radiators. You don’t need an efficient radiator to lose a significant amount of power. Short wire antennas << 1/2 wave still radiate, they just look capacitative rather than resistive. The USA (or Siberia) is a pretty big place.
g
“george e. smith
February 8, 2016 at 10:45 am”
Yes it does. It’s one reason why it’s called an alternator.
I know this is probably going to be ridiculed etc. but it’s just too interesting to ignore imho “The Safire project” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGGewRoSV20 This is an engineering project, so shouldn’t frighten theorethicians too much …?
Tomas
How much energy did they have to put in to get the 100 second fusion? More or less than the fusion produced?
If energy input was less than fusion produced that would be the big headline, not the duration of the burn. A 100 second burn doesn’t amount to much for a power plant unless it can get power gain.
Linked to wrong tube of course, sorry, this i the one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFsTttzh0oA
SAFIRE Documentary Trailer
http://youtu.be/nbI-PduG6cs
David A
February 7, 2016 at 4:52 am
“I am of the view that surrounding the fusion reaction with a layer of 100 percent CO2 will easily maintain the heat and sustain the reaction. (An IPCC model told me so)”
This is what is wonderful about WUWT with all the bright visitors it gets. I think David A has inadvertently come up with an important piece of the fusion puzzle. All fusion efforts have focused on the core of the technology with apparently no thought to other more mundane things that could make the difference. I don’t know about CO2 as a surround, but certainly an IR ‘reflector’ to bounce the fugitive heat back into the magnetic bottle seems like a brilliant idea.
Why an IR reflector ?? The peak EM radiation wavelengths are in the x-ray gamma ray region, not IR.
g
Manmade CO2 being the breakthrough leap needed for a working fusion reactor is so ironic, it has to be true.
The article says; “Germany, China and India are taking an interest in Fusion, because they know that whoever cracks the fusion problem, will own the world.”
I beg to differ. It looks like Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) is further along. Industrial Heat has built a commercial 1 MW LENR plant that has been supplying steam to a real customer for eleven months. The results of the one year trial should be available soon.
Obviously cheap. safe. pollution free LENR has many advantages over fusion and is fully scalable.. See Mats Lewan’s webinar. .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ3S3YMH96s&feature=youtu.be
.
America has squandered many billions on pie-in-the-sky nuclear fusion R&D over the past 40 years with little to show for it.
A fusion effort I’ve been following for years is the Polywell fusor, a product of Energy Matter Conversion Corporation out of San Diego. They recently proved the ability to confine a high beta plasma. To understand what that means, beta is the ratio of plasma pressure opposing the confining magnetic field pressure. In the ITER Tokamac, the highest beta achieved is 0.03, in a Polywell it can run as high as almost 1.0.
EMC2 is still progressing, apparently. one ought to check Talk-Polywell.org.
I don’t know…….whenever I read these articles (and now especially the PC ones that include India and China – have the writers ever visited these places I wonder), De Gaulle’s comment about Brazil come to mind.
Fusion power is the future and it always will be.
BTW, if anybody’s interested in HVDC power transmission:
http://www.energy.siemens.com/us/pool/hq/power-transmission/HVDC/HVDC_Proven_Technology.pdf
is a good place to start.
Smoke is coming out of my BS meter again. We do not need a limitless supply of energy. We need a finite supply of energy. Which we happen to have.
The sky is not falling